Object Image

An Old Woman ('The Ugly Duchess')

This must be one of the most arresting faces in the National Gallery's Collection. An elderly woman with lively eyes set deep in their sockets, a snub nose, wide nostrils, pimply skin, a hairy mole, bulging forehead and a prominent square chin rests one hand on a marble parapet. Her neck is rumpled by age and she seems to have lost all her teeth. She is elegantly and aristocratically dressed, although by the time this picture was painted her clothes would have been many decades out of date and her cleavage considered scandalous. She brazenly challenges every traditional canon of beauty and rule of propriety.

This painting is part of a pair: her 'other half' is in a private collection in New Yo...

c. 1513
Oil on panel
62.4 x 45.5cm
NG5769
Image and text © The National Gallery, London, 2024

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